


as vast as the sea

by elrohir



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Celebrimbor has a lot to think about, Gen, His family is dead, Lindon (Tolkien), Post-War of Wrath, Second Age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2020-01-01 06:40:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18330659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elrohir/pseuds/elrohir
Summary: He squinted across the waters at the new horizon, shading his face with his hand. So this was what Beleriand had become.





	as vast as the sea

**Author's Note:**

> Written for James (@avnakin on tumblr). Thanks for the prompt! This was fun to write!

The fires and noise of Gil-galad’s camp lay a mile behind him. He walked alone on the black beach. Sharp rocks and shards of Avarin pottery littered Lindon’s unfamiliar shores, and he carefully picked his way around the skeletons of uprooted, leafless trees. Salt-spray stung his eyes and nose, more acidic than he remembered.

He squinted across the waters at the new horizon, shading his face with his hand. _So this is what Beleriand has become._

Five hundred years of civilization, swallowed by the sea. Strange fish now swum in the jeweled caverns of Menegroth and Nargothrond, and Gondolin’s white towers crumbled in a watery grave. The triumphs and failings of the Noldor alike were lost to Belegaer’s relentless waves.

The bones of his father, too, slept beneath the sea.

“What meaning was there to any of it?” he cried, harsh wind cutting at his face. “Did nothing of the last five centuries survive?”

The rhythmic undulation of the waves gave no answer. He stepped forward, continuing along the beach, and a sharp object pierced his boot. He looked down. The hilt of a snapped sword, clearly Noldor-crafted, jutted half-buried out of the black sand. He grimaced.

_The broken remnants of a broken people. In chasing the light of the Silmarils we lost our own._

He kicked the hilt with the side of his boot in a fit of uncharacteristic frustration and sat down on a salt-slicked rock nearby. His foot throbbed.

“What does it mean to be of Feanor’s line in a world without Silmarils?”

He tossed a rock into the water idly, then scoffed wryly.

Dark clouds roiled in the distance, threatening rain. Bursting against the shore, the sea spat up a small, tarnished ring. He caught it with both hands.Its solid, blocky band, though scratched and dented, echoed the distinctive style of the smiths who worked under Curufin in Nargothrond.

 _Not all of Feanor’s line is fallen,_ he remembered. The bright blaze of the morning sun on the Narog a hundred years ago burned in his chest.

A realization came to him, and he laughed. The loud sound rang around him. “Feanor failed because he valued too highly the works of his hands. But true worth lies not in the work, but in what comes of it.”

An eagle cried overhead, and he gazed at the sky, acid rain stinging his eyes. A vision of a vast, wall-less city, where all the free peoples of Middle-earth gathered for the betterment of the world, flickered behind his eyes.

“The age of the Jewels is ended,” he shouted. “With this Age we begin anew!”

He turned his back to the waters, and began the careful trek back to Gil-galad’s camp, heart lighter than it had been in a decade.          


End file.
